A known apparatus for decelerating and accumulating hot rolled long products is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,021,103, the description of which is therein incorporated by reference, With this type of apparatus, as depicted schematically herein in FIGS. 1 to 3A, a hot rolled product 10 is directed at a velocity V1 through a curved delivery guide 12. The guide has an entry end 12a aligned with an axis “A” to receive the product, and a delivery end 12b spaced radially from axis A. The delivery end is orientated to deliver the product in an exit direction and at an angle θ with respect to a reference plane “P” perpendicular to axis A.
The guide 12 is rotated continuously about axis A in a direction opposite to the exit direction of the product and at a rotational speed at which the exit end 12b of the guide has a velocity V2, thereby decelerating the product being delivered from the guide's exit end to a reduced velocity V3 equal to V1-V2. The curvature of the guide and the exit angle θ are such as to form the delivered product into a helix which is received and temporarily accumulated on a cylindrical drum 14 aligned on axis A.
The drum 14 is rotated about axis A in a direction opposite to the direction of rotation of the curved guide 12 to thereby unwind the temporarily accumulating product.
A receiving guide 16 is movable to and fro along a path “B” parallel to axis A. At the beginning of a coiling operation, and as shown in FIGS. 3 and 3A, the exit end 12b of the guide 12 is rotationally located at an angle α with respect to the receiving guide 16, and the receiving guide is located at an initial position adjacent to but outside of the rotational path of the guide exit end 12b. 
In accordance with conventional practice, once the front end of the product entered the receiving guide 16, it was heretofore thought adequate to begin incrementally advancing the receiving guide along path B and away from plane P through incremental distances slightly greater than the diameter of the product. However, it has now been determined that such incremental advancement is insufficient to prevent successive convolutions of the product from buckling and overlapping, each other. When this occurs, the ordered unwinding of the product is adversely affected, and in extreme cases, completely interrupted.